Broken chains

To write to his heart's desire, with no fear of punishment, was all Jalal Barzanji could ever dream of.

Barzanji, a Kurdish Iraqi, is living his dream as Edmonton's inaugural Writer-in-Exile - a writer-in-residency program created by the literary and human rights association PEN Canada to foster refugee writers who have fled persecution in their home countries.

Edmonton's Writer-in-Exile program was conceived last October when renowned Canadian writer and activist John Ralston Saul challenged the city to host the program, during his keynote address at the Edmonton International Literary Festival. He noted how the city's rich literary culture and vast community of immigrants and refugees would make it an ideal location.

Motivated by Saul's words, local author and journalist Todd Babiak wrote a column in the Edmonton Journal, questioning why most of Canada's Writer-in-Exile programs were located in southern Ontario. Literature professors, arts administrators, politicians and professional writers were inspired by Babiak's call to action. Representatives from the Faculty of Arts, City of Edmonton, Athabasca University, Grant MacEwan College, the Writers Guild of Alberta, Edmonton Public Library, Edmonton Arts Council and LitFest formed a committee that brainstormed ideas, applied for funding and selected the candidate. PEN Canada had already co-ordinated similar initiatives in Canada and other countries, and proved an invaluable information resource during the creation of Edmonton's program.

When Babiak approached the U of A's Faculty of Arts, Dean Daniel Woolf was enthusiastic to provide funding in order to make the program a reality.

"The opportunity to participate in allowing a persecuted writer...the freedom to write was simply too good to pass up. It helped that local organizations with which we've already been working were just as committed," Woolf said.

The initial support from the Faculty of Arts ensured the program's establishment, with remaining funding coming from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Edmonton Community Foundation. The committee is now planning to make the program a permanent fixture in the city, and is developing sustainable funding strategies to ensure the program continues annually.

Eight months after Saul's initial challenge, the committee announced Barzanji its inaugural Writer-in-Exile. The selection committee considered a list of suggested writers provided by PEN Canada, but decided to offer the opportunity to a writer who already lived and worked in the city. Linda Goyette, the Edmonton Public Library's Writer-in-Residence, knew of Barzanji and was impressed by his determination to continue writing and publishing since coming to Canada.

"He had not only published his work in online Kurdish publications, he actively pursued opportunities to meet Edmonton's writers and poets and participate in local readings," said Goyette. "There are many writers like Jalal in Edmonton, although they are not as well-known. Jalal is already encouraging this group - and that's not one bit surprising. He is a gift to this city."

Babiak agrees that Barzanji is an ideal selection. "Jalal Barzanji was a top poet, essayist, and journalist in Kurdish Iraq, and he came here and couldn't speak the language. He had lost his support network, he had lost his audience, and he has been lost to what he had been trying to do. He is a writer without a voice, and that's terrible. Jalal, as an example of a Writer-in-Exile, has a really unique voice and can remind us that freedom of speech isn't easy, and that literature is essential for a culture to exist."

For Barzanji, the position is a dream come true. In fact, June 6, 2007 - the day of the official program launch - is marked as 'My Special Day' on his personal calendar at home. "It's unbelievable for me because I never thought I would be writing regularly in Canada. I knew it's a multi-cultural society, but I never thought that one day I would have an office just for my writing," he said. Barzanji's one-year appointment provides him the time, space, and financial means to build his writing career in Canada.

In addition, Barzanji spends time working with other immigrant writers in the city, helping them build networks and restart their writing careers. He holds offices at the downtown Stanley A. Milner Library and on campus, where he writes and meets with Canadian and non-Canadian writers. He encourages those who visit him to try to be optimistic - telling them to look at him as an example of someone in a similar situation who has been given the opportunity to write again.

Barzanji immigrated to Edmonton almost a decade ago after leaving Iraq in 1996. He has been writing since he was 17, when he published his first collection of poetry. As an outspoken critic of the censorship under former Saddam Hussein, Barzanji had been fully expecting to be either imprisoned or executed - it was only a matter of when it would happen. "The regime was against freedom, and I was asking for freedom. I wasn't a follower of the ideology and mentality of the regime. My pain was double - I was a modern writer and I was Kurdish...I was living in fear because I knew I was doing something dangerous, talking about peace, democracy, freedom," he said.

One evening in 1986, a group of military men forced their way into Barzanji's home and took him away in his pajamas, blindfolded and handcuffed. He cannot recall how long he was kept in solitude in a small cell. He was later moved to a larger space shared by about 15 others, where each prisoner had approximately 35 centimeters of space to sleep.

But imprisonment of the body is not the same as imprisonment of the mind, and for Barzanji, writing is his reason for being: "If I don't write, I feel like I've lost something. Writing has become part of my life and spirituality."

And so, with help from a prison guard who slipped him pieces of scrap paper and a pencil, Barzanji bravely defied his captors and continued to write - this time, letters to his wife, detailing his experiences and those of others in prison.

Barzanji was pardoned and released from prison after three years, as part of one of Hussein's birthday celebrations. Although he continued to live in fear of his life, he maintained his dreams of freedom. He still wrote, but in secret, as he was still under investigation.

In 1991, after an uprising in Kurdistan that drove out Hussein's forces, Barzanji was asked to be the chief editor of a Kurdish magazine. He knew it would be a challenge, because although Hussein's military was now absent, a legacy of governmental control remained.

"The media was controlled by a very strong and powerful central government. You can't isolate free media from the rest of society. For writers who were asking for freedom of expression, the price was too high because everything was controlled by power and blood and fear," he said. Nevertheless, Barzanji maintained his patient resolve amid the circumstances, and adds that protesting against the conditions would have led to execution.

Hussein's forces returned to Kurdistan in 1996 and Barzanji and his family fled to Turkey, approaching the United Nations to claim refugee status. After receiving government sponsorship, they headed to Canada.

It took time to adjust to their new life in Canada. Goyette had met Barzanji soon after he had arrived as a refugee in 1998. She recalls how Barzanji and his family's happiness shone through, in spite of all of their difficulties. At the time, she remembers Barzanji quoting Kurdish poet Ibrahim Ahmad to express his sentiments: Don't be frightened of the chains on your arms. They can arrest your body, but not your soul. It was Barzanji's touching story and enduring spirit that placed him at the top of Goyette's mind when the time came to select the first Writer-in-Exile.

During his term, Barzanji is working on his prison memoir. He has already written seven chapters of it in Kurdish, and he hopes to publish it within the next year and eventually have it translated into English. The book is tentatively titled In Blue Pyjamas, in reference to the night he was arrested.

"It's a little bit hard to go back into that memory because it is a bad memory. On the other hand, when I go back to this memory I want to put it into words," he said. "I (would) like to share with people what happened, and what's happening to writers because they write about peace, beauty and human desire."

Barzanji notices a change in the direction and style of his writing since leaving Iraq. "When I was in Iraq there was no freedom of expression, and now in Canada I have freedom of expression, and my writing is improving."

Looking back on the struggles he has endured, Barzanji couldn't be happier with this new opportunity. He gives a humble smile as he reflects on his nearly decade-long story in Edmonton: "Since I arrived in 1998, I haven't had enough time to work on my writing...Now, I have time, so I'm very happy and excited...It's a dream come true. The process completed. Now, I'm in Canada."

(This article first appeared in the Faculty of Arts magazine Work of Arts).